When I had heard this and convinced myself that it was substantially true—­for I was always too cautious to accept the loose and unsifted gossip of a provincial town—­I think that for the first time in my life I experienced the passion of hate towards a human being.  Why should this man who was so rich and powerful thus devote his energies to the destruction of a brother practitioner who was struggling and poor?  At the time I set it down to pure malice, into which without doubt it blossomed at last, not understanding that in the first place on Sir John’s part it was in truth terror born of his own conscious mediocrity.  Like most inferior men, he was quick to recognise his master, and, either in the course of our conversations or through inquiries that he made concerning me, he had come to the conclusion that so far as professional ability was concerned I was his master.  Therefore, being a creature of petty and dishonest mind, he determined to crush me before I could assert myself.

Now, having ascertained all this beyond reasonable doubt, there were three courses open to me:  to make a public attack upon Sir John, to go away and try my fortune elsewhere, or to sit still and await events.  A more impetuous man would have adopted the first of these alternatives, but my experience of life, confirmed as it was by the advice of Emma, who was a shrewd and far-seeing woman, soon convinced me that if I did so I should have no more chance of success than would an egg which undertook a crusade against a brick wall.  Doubtless the egg might stain the wall and gather the flies of gossip about its stain, but the end of it must be that the wall would still stand, whereas the egg would no longer be an egg.  The second plan had more attractions, but my resources were now too low to allow me to put it into practice.  Therefore, having no other choice, I was forced to adopt the third, and, exercising that divine patience which characterises the Eastern nations but is so lacking in our own, to attend humbly upon fate until it should please it to deal to me a card that I could play.

In time fate dealt to me that card and my long suffering was rewarded, for it proved a very ace of trumps.  It happened thus.

About a year after I arrived in Dunchester I was elected a member of the City Club.  It is a pleasant place, where ladies are admitted to lunch, and I used it a good deal in the hope of making acquaintances who might be useful to me.  Among the habitues of this club was a certain Major Selby, who, having retired from the army and being without occupation, was generally to be found in the smoking or billiard room with a large cigar between his teeth and a whisky and soda at his side.  In face, the Major was florid and what people call healthy-looking, an appearance that to a doctor’s eye very often conveys no assurance of physical well-being.  Being a genial-mannered man, he would fall into conversation with whoever might be near to him, and thus I came to be slightly acquainted with him.  In the course of our chats he frequently mentioned his ailments, which, as might be expected in the case of such a luxurious liver, were gouty in their origin.